"Rush Limbaugh"

Louis Proyect, Marxmail

Rush Limbaugh, the dean of rightwing talk radio, was forced to resign as football commentator for the ESPN cable sports station (he actually got his start in broadcasting in sports) after stating on a pre-game show last Sunday:

"Distrust of U.S. Fuels Stories About Source of the Attacks"

Ian Johnson, Wall Street Journal

Munich, Germany -- Andreas von Bulow's book has climbed the
German bestseller list, his lectures are jammed and, after
two years of mounting frustration, his ideas are gaining
traction.

His thesis: The U.S. government staged the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks on New York and Washington to justify wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq. It is a tentative theory, he admits,
based mostly on his doubt that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda
terrorist group launched the attacks. "That's something
that is simply 99% false," he said at a reading of his book
on the second anniversary of the attacks.

"Houston Exec Gets Top Iraq Energy Post"

David Ivanovich, Houston Chronicle, 23 September 2003

WASHINGTON -- Houston's Robert E. McKee III, a former ConocoPhillips executive, has been appointed the new senior adviser to the Iraqi Oil Ministry.

He will replace Philip J. Carroll, the one-time head of Shell Oil Co. who has overseen the often tumultuous effort to jump-start Iraq's oil sector for less than five months.

"U.S. Plan to Attack Seven Muslim States"

Al Jazeera, 22 September 2003

Presidential Hopeful General Wesley Clark says the White House devised a five-year plan after the 9/11 strikes to attack seven majority-Muslim countries.

A former commander of NATO's forces in Europe, Clark claims he met a senior military officer in Washington in November 2001 who told him the Bush administration was planning to attack Iraq first before taking action against Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.

"White House Knew Saddam Was No Threat"

John Pilger

Australian investigative journalist John Pilger says he has evidence the war against Iraq was based on a lie which could cost George W Bush and Tony Blair their jobs and bring Prime Minister John Howard down with them.

A television report by Pilger aired on British screens last night said US Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice confirmed in early 2001 that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had been disarmed and was no threat.

BUZZFLASH: Many of our readers don't realize that you are an economics
professor at Princeton. How did you come to write a column for The New
York Times op-ed page?

KRUGMAN: Well, they just called me out of the blue. Actually it was
Tom Friedman who acted as intermediary, because I'd met him. But it
was just out of the blue. It was 1999, and at the time, it seemed like
our problem was: "How do we deal with prosperity and all the
interesting things that were happening in the business world?" They
thought that they needed somebody to write about that, and somehow had
learned that in addition to regular professor-type stuff, I'd actually
been writing journalistic pieces for Fortune and for Slate, and they
asked me to come on. It seemed like it might be interesting and fun,
and of course we figured that the U.S. policy would be sensible and
reasonable, and I'd be writing mostly about disasters elsewhere of the
new economy. And what do you know? It turned out to be something
quite different from anything we imagined.

"Mussolini Never Killed Anyone, Berlusconi Says"

Japan Today, Sept. 12, 2003

ROME - Italy's outspoken Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi unleashed new
controversy Thursday, declaring that the former fascist dictator Benito
Mussolini did not kill anyone, just sent them on holiday.
"Mussolini never killed anyone. Mussolini used to send people on holiday
within the borders of the country," Berlusconi was quoted as telling the
Voce di Rimini newspaper.
His comment immediately triggered outrage in Italy, with some claiming it
was an apology for fascism and embarrassed his coalition partners, even
though Berlusconi said he had not intended to rewrite his country's history.

"Westerners Pretty Rich"

Leander Kahney, Wired News, Sep. 11, 2003

You may think your salary is paltry, but compared with most of the
world's population, you're up there with Bill Gates.

A new website, the Global Rich List,
starkly illustrates the worldwide distribution of wealth.

An anonymous coward writes:

"What Does the Pentagon See in "Battle of Algiers"?

Michael T. Kaufman, New York Times, September 7, 2003

Challenged by terrorist tactics and guerrilla warfare
in Iraq, the Pentagon recently held a screening of
"The Battle of Algiers," the film that in the late
1960s was required viewing and
something of a teaching tool for radicalized Americans
and revolutionary wannabes opposing the Vietnam War.

Anonymous Comrade submits:

"Chile's Allende Seen as a Hero
3 Decades after Overthrow, Death

Kevin G. Hall, Knight Ridder News Service,
Miami Herald

Santiago, Chile -- Thirty years after Chilean President
Salvador Allende died in a U.S.-backed coup, new
books, political tributes, court cases and press
revelations are prompting Chileans to reassess the man
and the 1973 coup that began the 17-year dictatorship
of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.